TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

Olja Knežević

“Hey, just come with me,” says my cousin, Jumpy Two.

Outside the building entrance I see everybody, the guerillas and the gendarmes. They’re standing there, heads bowed. “Kaća.” It’s theboy I’min lovewithandwhomI’d beenplanning to kiss impetuously. He comes up and hugs me. “I’m really sorry,” he whispers. Oh, the all-encompassing warmth of his embrace. My skin tingles from the heat. We look at each other, he’s uncomfortable. He takes a deep breath: “Y-your mother died,” he says, and kisses me on the cheek. The kissmakesme happy. Abrief moment of happiness before a long stretch of grief. Nah, Mom’s just real sick, maybe she passed out from the pain, she can’t have died-died , I tell myself as I enter our apartment. Cousins are there, and neighbors, and Marijeta’s mother, who is clutching to her breast her famous Bible, which I stare at for a very long time. This is not a good sign, I conclude, but still— one good sign is my sourpuss granny clucking her tongue in the hallway at my mother’s choice of wallpaper, patterned like fireworks. “Who wouldn’t get sick from this wallpaper?” she asks under her breath. She’s my mother’s mother—surely the wallpaper wouldn’t matter so much to her if her youngest daughter had actually died-died. “What are you sorry about?”

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